


Provenance

by sleeplessandcynical



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst and Attempted Arson, Author Is Sleep Deprived, F/M, I'm Sorry, One Shot, Other, POV Third Person, Ridiculous, allusions to the Shield days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 10:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11273949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessandcynical/pseuds/sleeplessandcynical
Summary: the Architect meets the Archivist.(Inspired by the WWE 2k18 trailer. Rated T for swearing and a bit of violence.)Provenancen. (provenancial, adj.) ~ 1. The origin or source of something. - 2. Information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection.Contextn. ~ 1. The organizational, functional, and operational circumstances surrounding materials' creation, receipt, storage, or use, and its relationship to other materials. - 2. The circumstances that a user may bring to a document that influences that user's understanding of the document.





	Provenance

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the WWE2k18 ad the other night where Seth burns down the WWE archives and spent the whole thing simultaneously cringing and cackling. I am not the actual WWE archivist (although, through a couple of lengthy points of connection, I hear he’s a great guy who does a great job), but I have been a reference & collections management archivist and audiovisual/ephemera preservation geek for over a decade and had also eaten a few too many cupcakes. Please have the ridiculous, preachy results of my sugar high. I’ve also never written Seth Rollins before and I’m moderately terrified.
> 
> (Also, this is an extremely fictionalized version of an archives, natch, since the one in the ad bore a bit of a resemblance to a hybrid repository. If you want me to talk your ear off about ephemera preservation and proper fire suppression systems and reading room security, well, I’m always around)

Baseball bat in one hand, gasoline can in the other.

Seth Rollins couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so at home.

On a roof in Stamford, Connecticut, of all places. Over the fence, through the lot, up the fire escape, now popping the sticky but rarely-used emergency door. The sun had just gone down, and he took a moment to relish the wind through his hair before stuffing it into his low-slung knit hat. For some reason, that small task restarted the winding fire of nerves in his stomach, and he let out a deep exhale that seemed to only fan the flames, make the height more dizzying.

_Time to step up. Time to start over. Time to burn it down._

Avoiding security was easy this time of night; it was practically nonexistent, and not a whisper disturbed the calm of his approach.  

He stood in the middle of the reading room and rolled his shoulders, contemplating a careful plan of attack.

But then it hit him.

Literally hit him, right in the chest.

And “it,” as it turned out, was a set of fists attached to a small, dark, curly-haired wrecking ball in a cardigan and sensible trousers.

Even the best plans of the Architect didn’t account for the Archivist working late that night.

 _Shit._ Rollins had been hearing stories about this one for as long as he could remember. She was, by all accounts, a study in contradictions – fierce and careful. Mind like a bear trap, and a mouth like one too. Weakness for comic-book Pops. A dragon with a plate of chocolate-chip cookies.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me, asshole? Not on my watch.” She cocked her fist and punched him again.

 _Holy shit, this bitch packs a wallop_ , he thought, dropping the gas can and rubbing his sore jaw. He took a step back, but she was half a beat faster, and yanked the hat off his head as his hair tumbled down around his shoulders.

Now it was her turn to look surprised as she snatched the can before he could pick it back up, spiriting it away lightning-quick to a ventilated, locking cabinet that he guessed was probably for visitors’ jackets.

“Rollins? Seriously? You monumental _twit._ ” She actually grabbed him one-handed by the front of his jacket and gave him a shake, as though he were an errant child.

Seth fought the urge to look at his toes, bite his lip, tap his fingers nervously on the front of his sweatpants.

_Hold your head up. You’re Seth Freakin’ Rollins. You know exactly what you’re doing. Yeah._

“Lady,” he huffed, “If it’s your job you’re worried about, I think you’ll be gainfully employed for a long time trying to clear all this up when I’m done.”

“ _Fuck_ you, Rollins, and fuck your unbelievable stupidity.” That he did _not_ expect. Weren’t librarians supposed to be… _quiet_ or some shit? “You could have been fucking killed. The fire suppression systems in this building are no fucking joke, nor should they be.”

Okay, _that_ he hadn’t thought of. Not that he was going to tell her. “What, you gonna drown me in the sprinklers?”

“They’re gas-based, you genius. If you’re in the wrong place when they go off, it’s like getting hit with a shock wave. If you don’t get out of the room in time, you could suffocate. You think we use _sprinklers_ on a collection that’s mostly fragile ephemera – oh for fuck’s sake, if Trips doesn’t kill you, I will.”

She crossed her arms and glared at him. It was _extremely_ effective. All hopes of playing it cool evaporated, and Seth actually caught himself shuffling his feet, fighting the urge to… beg forgiveness? From the dragon lady?

_Son, you are losing your touch. The plates are falling off your armor and your underbelly is showing._

“Did you honestly think you could just stroll in here, wreck everything, and toss a match over your shoulder like a cartoon? The fumes alone. Jesus.” She looked exhausted, and rubbed her face with her free hand. “Why do you think I do this job, Rollins? Why do you think we keep this shit in the first place? Just to make _you_ feel bad?”

“Well, it _does,_ ” he snapped, regretting it almost immediately.

She held out her hand, and after a very long moment, he passed her what was in his and she released him with a shove that sent him stutter-stepping backwards. She slung the baseball bat over her shoulder with such natural grace that Rollins had a sneaking suspicion she’d been more than a bit of a rabble-rouser at some point along the line, and had to bite back a smile.

The door to her office was already open, probably flung that way in her haste to go after him. Seth raised an eyebrow. That’s ballsy. Most people would have probably locked the door and called security. He assumed she was going to shove him in there, next to the collection of what appeared to be Hellboy figurines, but instead, she gestured to a long, empty desk with several chairs lined neatly along one side.

Obediently, he sat down. She pulled out a chair, angled it to face him, and then did the same, bracing the bat and her forearms across her thighs.

“If you wreck the history that’s in here, you don’t get a clean slate, Rollins. Your boss does. _Our_ boss does. What’s in this building is the only way you have of holding him responsible for what he did to you. To _everybody_.” Her voice got softer, and Seth felt his shoulders drop just the tiniest bit as he flicked his eyes up to hers and then away. Hope? Is this what hope feels like?  

“You think I don’t know?” She chuckled, and it was _way_ prettier than it had any right to be coming from somebody who was still wielding a baseball bat. “I see everything that comes in here. It all crosses my desk first. Not everybody does things that way, but I sure as hell do, because if blueprints are your business, data is mine.”

Seth realized his hands were trembling, and he didn’t know why. “I just… It hurts. It’s a reminder of every stupid thing I’ve ever done, all in one room. Every person I ever fucked over, and everyone who’s ever fucked with me.” He realized he was rambling, almost out of breath, but unable to stop barreling through words. “Everything I’m supposed to live up to, put away in glass, safe and secure. Like it’s treasure and I’m not. We’re not. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. Why am I telling you this?”

Her eyes were soft and serious and cut right through him. “Can I show you something? It might be awful.”

He thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. She twirled the bat in one hand and then led him off down a side aisle to some kind of closed cabinet, unlocking one of the big sliding drawers with the ring of keys she had hooked to her beltloop.

She looked over at him before she tugged the drawer open, and he drew in a sharp breath at what was laid out, loosely wrapped, on a bed of matte paper.

It was a chair.

A twisted, bent, warped steel chair, parts of the shiny finish still matted with sweat and blood.

“See how that feels?” Her voice was surprisingly gentle.

“Like I never want to see it again as long as I live.”

“Exactly.” She closed the drawer. “And now you don’t have to.” The lock clicked. “Without having to burn down the goddamn building.”

It was a lot. It was too much. All of it was just _too much what were you thinking_ and suddenly it got real hard to breathe.

“Don’t you _understand?_ ” he stuttered between gasps. “Don’t you understand that all of this is better off gone? It feels like it’s gonna break me in half.”

“But it won’t. And yeah, anyone who looks at that is going to think about you, maybe before they think of anyone else, but my job is to present it with its full… emotional provenance, whatever you want to call it.”

Seth wiped his eyes and wasn’t surprised to find a tear or two there. It wasn’t even the ghosts of _his_ physical pain, but it still hurt. _Defuse, defuse, defuse._ “I have literally no idea what that means.”

The corner of her mouth curved. “I try very, very hard to make sure people have the whole story, whatever that means. That may be the projectile, and you might have been the weapon that fired it, but it took more than that to pull the trigger, yeah? That’s a gross oversimplification, but that’s why we have records. That’s why I do what I do.”

“So what, our mutual boss just lets you tell everybody he’s a manipulative scumbag?”

That made her genuinely laugh. “Not in those words. But I’ve made it very clear to him that mission critical for me is transparency, access, and representation. He can fire me if he wants, but he sure as hell hasn’t so far, and ethics is… kind of a thing in this line of work. I’m not his goddamn puppet.”

Seth flinched, and she instinctively reached for his shoulder. “Sorry, that was not my most compassionate moment right there.”

“’S okay.” He sank into her touch, light as it was, and she tucked a stray piece of hair behind his ear before leading him further down the aisle to another set of shelves, these ones occupied with flat, grey boxes of varying sizes. She felt her way over a few labels in the dim light, and he could tell by the quickness of her fingers that she’d done this a thousand times before, for one reason or another. Finally, she nudged a single, slim, medium-sized box out, and led him back to the reading room before setting it down.

“The point is, the powers that be can tell me how much space I have, how much money, how many staff. They can even sign off on some of the bigger acquisitions and the collection and retention policies, but I’m the one who _writes_ ‘em in the first place. A large part of what I do from there is just running the shop. Take care of the donor agreements and retention periods, track chain of custody, keep everything nice and pretty, watch for gaps in chronology and representation. I doubt most of the people in this _building_ even have a full grasp of what we do down here, and while that can be a fun old time during budget cuts, it also means nobody is micromanaging my business.”

“So you keep the data, and you… catalog? Is that the right word?” She nodded and shrugged. “Catalog the circumstances where it was created, and then just hang on for dear life. And try to put it together in a way that tells the whole story.”

“Not bad, Rollins. I heard you were the brains of the operation.” She favored him with another crooked smile. And he did feel favored indeed.

Seth gave another gasp when she took off the lid, but he couldn’t stop watching her hands as she slid through the Mylar and buffer sheets, carefully supporting each layer before spreading them out over the table. There were so many files, papers, contracts, letters, memos, even magazine and newspaper pages, and every single one of them brought back memories almost too intense to bear. The NXT days. That first championship. All the blood, sweat, tears, friendships, heartbeats, and history. The truth, as it unfurled itself in the low light of the reading room. 

And that was just one box. And that was just _paper._

He shook his head, very nearly overwhelmed, willing his hands not to shake as he carefully replaced everything and followed her back to the shelf. “I always heard history was written by the victors.”

She leaned on the bat. “In some cases, yes. But they have to get through us first.”

 

* * *

 

“So, um, can I like, buy you dinner or something? To make up for being such a pain in the ass? I think the diner is still open.” He fired off what he hoped was his most charming smile as they made their way across the deserted parking lot.  

She paused for a moment, then slung the baseball bat over the back of her neck, letting her wrists drape casually over the top. “I’ll allow it. But only because I’m keeping an eye on you until you are well the fuck away from my collections, Rollins. I don't get paid enough to wrangle wannabe arsonists.”

He cackled at that, full-on threw his head back, and it felt like all the weight on his chest took off into the dark sky. “Fair enough.”


End file.
